Re: Store (large) images inside or outside database?

Hi, Susanne,

Expect a lot of feedback. This borders on a religious issue and,  
since you've clearly described the issue in the subject of your  
message, it will probably attract religious fanaticism.

For a pretty reasoned discussion of the issue, take a look at:

    http://wiki.objectstyle.org/confluence/display/WO/Web 
+Applications-Development-Database+vs+Filesystem

Then form your own conclusions. Personally, I generally subscribe to  
the image-in-the-file-system model. But there are good counter  
arguments.

Regards,
Jerry

On Feb 7, 2008, at 6:01 AM, Susanne Schneider wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> today I need some advice on a conceptual basis:
> We need to include images in our WO 5.2.3 application working
> with Oracle 9.i as a database. The images may be of various kind
> including DICOM images and therefore could be very different in size
> (maybe from 100 KB up to 100 MB or even more).
>
> Besides the problem of handling such variety of formats I could not
> really make up my mind if we should store such large objects in the
> database and reflect them with eo-properties or store them in the  
> filesystem and only the pointer in the database. The images are  
> treated as read only: once they were uploaded they will be stored  
> and only be displayed for download/view. The image property would  
> be put into a separate table to be only loaded if needed.
>
> These were my considerations:
> - memory consumption while using eos (as I understood the image- 
> property would at least be hold twice: once in the eo in every  
> editing context and once in the snapshot)
> - backup and recovery issues of the database
> - transaction management
>
> Any comments?
> Susanne
> -- 
> Susanne Schneider
> Coordinator secuSuite Development



--
__ Jerry W. Walker,
    WebObjects Developer/Instructor for High Performance Industrial  
Strength Internet Enabled Systems

     [email protected]
     203 278-4085        office